Who are all those people smiling down from the walls of the Cubberley Education Library's reading room? The tags on the portraits are difficult if not impossible to read. They are the deans of the Graduate School of Education, starting with Ellwood P. Cubberley and ending with Deborah Stipek. There is a new page on the library's website which tells you more, including the names that go with each and links to information about them and where to find their papers.

The use of graphic novels and their techniques is becoming increasingly popular in education where a variety of new literacies are supplementing the importance of the written word. Cubberley Library has books on this subject and a variety of graphic novels which are featured in a new guide to Graphic novels and education. Graphic novels are being used in a number of subject areas including history with works such as Abina and the important men: a graphic history which tells the story of an African woman who sought to use the courts to free herself from slavery.

Two years after its founding in 1824, the American Sunday School Union published Hymns for Sunday School Teachers, a copy of which is now in the Music Library. Measuring a mere 10 cm. in height and 76 pages in length, it may be one of the smallest items in our collections. It joins 17 other publications by the Union in the Stanford Libraries.

Dr. Steve Schneider talks about how he became interested in earth systems and in atmospheric research in this excerpt from an interview done by Gray Thompson in 1992

“I was actually born in New York City. I didn’t live in it until I went back to Columbia University 17 years later. And I grew up in [Woodmere,] Long Island. And what I remember enjoying a lot about Long Island before the developers hacked down all the woods was getting dropped off in a square mile of woods which I used to call “the deep, dark forest…” and run around and just enjoy streams and nature.

The University Archives recently completed a CLIR-funded project to process the papers of the late Dr. Stephen Schneider. Steve was a professor who taught Bio 15N, Bio 147, ES 10, ES 15 and ES 179, among other classes. Steve was very well-liked by students and collaborators alike per his student and peer evaluations. Steve grew up on Long Island and attended Columbia University, where he received his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD.

The University Archives recently collaborated with faculty in the Computer Science Dept. to create a collection in the Stanford Digital Repository of white papers for an upcoming NSF summit on the future of computer science education.

September 22nd marks the beginning of banned books week. Cubberley has a display of just a few of the many banned/challenged children’s and young adult books. Topping the YA list this year is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. His book was challenged by two school districts this past year for “…explicit sexual references, encouraging pornography, racism, religious irreverence, and strong language.” He is used to it however, as his books frequently make the most frequently challenged list.

In addition to relocating the Manuscripts Division of Special Collections to SUL’s Redwood City (RWC) Location in October, the division is moving ahead with a recently funded Educational collections project.

This two-year project will prioritize processing for collections that contain or focus on the history of education. Those identified at this point are the records of EdSource (educational policy and legislation), and the Amado Padilla papers (faculty in the Department of Education at SU), and the Ruth Asawa papers (San Francisco School of the Arts – SOTA).